Ellison, the outspoken chairman and co-founder of the world's No. 2 software company, also attempted to soothe concerned PeopleSoft customers by vowing Oracle would take good care of its smaller rival's clients if the bid were successful.

Oracle made its bid for enterprise software maker PeopleSoft almost three weeks ago, shortly after that company agreed to take over fellow software maker J.D. Edwards JDEC.O .